A little advice/ assistance

SteveyConlan

I was just wondering if someone could tell me where I am going wrong. I am currently doing a church in 3DS Max for use in the Unity engine (build will be a Windows Standalone.)

I know that the problem is my UV mainly and I don't know quite the best way to set it out. I know that I need more brick space but with more brick space everything else looks terrible. I was considering tiling the texture across the whole of the building but then what is the best way to avoid an obviously tiled texture, is it decals and if so how big should they be in a texture and should I map them seperate to the Diffuse of the building or seperate?

Here is my render and Diffuse Map.



UV resized to a 512 from 2048 I can upload the full UV if needed.



This is still a WIP I just aren't happy with it so far I think it is the brick texture that is really annoying me and I know I have done a big mistake with the windows with the upper windows getting more detail than the lower ones (oops!)

I guess the question is really how should I space the UV, do people use set measurements 50% Brick 50% detail ?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Justin Meisse

wow... I'm sure everyone is overwhelmed trying to find out where to begin!


Your brick texture is tiling on your UV's anyway, so yes, you could use multiple materials (a multisub in max) and just apply a tiling brick to all the brick faces and then have a second material for everything else. This will increase the draw calls to 2.

the other way is to use more overlapping UVs... I did a quick illustration showing what I'm talking about:

If you use this method take advantage of the fact that stuff is uniquely laid out, don't just slap a tiling brick texture on it and call it done, put in some AO, grime, worn edges, etc..

remember, your texture repeats outside of the 0-1 box in the uv editor... so if your trim (the purple) is larger don't worry, just make sure the trim texture tiles left and right (I usually put trim textures at the bottom or top of a sheet)

Check out Chris Holden's Tutorials to see some examples of how much you can pack into one texture.

ALSO: keep your texel density consistent on environment art!! You can get away with giving less UV space to stuff you're 200% sure will always be far from the game camera just be careful.

SteveyConlan

First of all thanks for taking the time to reply, I kind of understand what you mean but lets say the vertical edges (green) had some AO applied or some grime how would you go about not making it look tiled on every section.

As for the trims I should keep them at the bottom so I can tile one pattern as many times with one polygon by stretching it over the 0,1 outlined box. I can see how that can be very useful I haven't thought about using it in that way before.

Thanks a lot for your help, it is greatly appreciated.

Justin Meisse

SteveyConlan wrote: »

First of all thanks for taking the time to reply, I kind of understand what you mean but lets say the vertical edges (green) had some AO applied or some grime how would you go about not making it look tiled on every section.

even though it's repeated it will not be very noticeable, I just remembered a really great post by Stefan Morrell illustrating this.

SteveyConlan

Thanks for that link (Chris Holden) through this I have been led to a MikeBart tutorial which looks very helpful. I'll check out your other one shortly

Mark Dygert

SteveyConlan wrote: »

First of all thanks for taking the time to reply, I kind of understand what you mean but lets say the vertical edges (green) had some AO applied or some grime how would you go about not making it look tiled on every section.

You can offset all of the overlapping pieces one unit to the left, right top or bottom leaving one behind. The majority will land outside the renderable 0-1 space but sit on a tile of the one piece that is left behind. You would probably pick the most generic piece with the less unique shadow detail to stay within the 0-1 space. That way when you bake the AO, ALL the unique shadow bits aren't rendered on top of each other making them all look fugly. You miss some shadow definition here and there but for the most part it will probably be ok.

It also depends on what engine your using and how it handles the light maps. Some engines like UDK will allow you to use a second UV channel for your light maps. You unwrap this 2nd UV channel to be 100% unique and its independent from your diffuse map layout. The light map gets built by the engine when it compiles the map.

This doesn't necessarily stop you from baking AO into your diffuse map but it does allow you keep it pretty generic and you only really need to reinforce those areas that you think the light map might not handle exactly like you want, like the shadows in the folds of the statues cloth.

Justin Meisse

/2nd what Vig sez

also the Stefan Morrell post isn't a tutorial it's just a post that will BLOW YOUR MIND!

Eric Chadwick

Also some good advice here.
http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryEnvironmentDesign#Modular_Design_and_Workflow

SteveyConlan

Thanks, I always forget to use the Polycount wiki for sources, but I guess the best of the forum is somewhere on the wiki. Also the Stefan Morrell link I don't think I've ever seen a UV map where this isn't a space.